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Nexteer Developing Steering For Self Driving Cars

Michigan continues to be one of the prime hubs for developing and strategizing the next generation cars and trucks. A major chunk of the tech going into these Self Driving cars are being sourced and developed from mid Michigan.
Of those developers, Nexteer Automotive; dealing with steering technology are closer than ever to making self driving cars a reality.
What we strive for is intuitive motion control. So that’s our goal, is to make these things really easy and shouldn’t require a lot of training,” said Jeff Zuraski, executive director of research and development for Nexteer.
Nexteer Automotive
Zuraski is pretty much certain and a firm believer in the future of an autonomous world. With respect to autonomous vehicles he says that, it all comes from the development of electric power steering. “There’s a whole rang or electric power steering systems. The ones you put on a small car might look different that what you would put on a full size truck. We make all versions and we’re going after all parts of market,” Zuraski said.
In Zuraski’s opinion, what makes self driving cars appealing in today’s society is the extra space and convenience.
For autonomous driving we’re looking at different configurations. So imagine you’re riding in an autonomous car, but it still has a steering wheel. That can now be stowed away so there’s more room to do other things. And because they’re decoupled, the steering wheel doesn’t have to move while you’re going around corners and whatever. It can just stay stationary,” Zuraski said.

Even though autonomous vehicles can drive themselves, Nexteer Automotive is developing steering technology for drivers to take over if necessary.
If any single thing fails it needs to keep working. You can also take back control, grab the wheel, pull it out and take over driving again. And we call this on demand steering and that way it’s safe,” Zuraski said.
Nexteer have not mentioned a specific timeline for when this technology will be available to the public.

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